tiggerprr’s scratching post

If you’re not familiar with Everquest, otherwise (and rightfully so) known as Evercrack, just know that it was a fantasy based online game where millions of people could be online at the same time, grouping together to kill dragons and other cool monsters, complete quests and make crafts while building your character and a community.

Those of you who’ve played Everquest, may be familiar (all too painfully) with the epic weapon quests that were introduced to the game with the first expansion pack “Everquest:The Ruins of Kunark”. My enchanter took literally over 2 years to complete her quest. I remember sitting up for nearly 24 hours with a cleric friend waiting for a mob to spawn for his. Yes, sane people did this folks, staying awake for unhealthy numbers of hours to get the one piece they needed to progress on the quest. My final piece was obtained, not by me while I was home from work, but by my husband (while he was at work), our friend (who yes, ran HOME from work to get online and help get it) and some others who happened to be online. So you see the level of insanity that completing these quests used to require.

Why is this important to today’s post? Never in a million years would I have ever thought that RL would mirror the EQ epic quest. But it did, all too familiarly. You see, we’ve been searching for a Nintendo Wii since just after Christmas. We waited to see which system, the PS3 or the Wii, would win the battle of the new gaming systems. We decided that Wii would be the most fun to play, not to mention the most economical. We figured once Christmas was over, we’d have a much easier time of locating a Wii. “Hahahahahahahahahaha!”, the Retail Gods seemed to say.

While completing the EQ epic quest, there were several pieces that were highly contested because the monster that dropped them would only spawn (appear in game) once every 3-7 days. Often, it wasn’t on a set schedule so you kind of had to guess or park yourself there for hours and hours at a time hoping upon hope you’ve estimated their arrival correctly. Yes, I sat looking at my screen in the middle of Neriak (dark elf town where I was KOS (kill on sight)) for several RL hours at a time chatting happily away with my guild on more than one occasion. Ugh.

Often people would go visit all the spawn points for the various monsters they needed for their quests hoping to randomly find the monster up and ready for the taking. Even then, it was a mad rush because 1000 other people needed the same monster. If one of them should stop by, it was a mad rush to see who could get their friends there to kill the monster first. Now, if I got somewhere and someone else had already started assembling their friends, I would respectfully not go for the kill. Most people aren’t like that in game. To steal someone else’s monster out from under them, is called “ganking”.

So, flash forward to 2007 and we’re looking for a Wii. I soon learned that the Wii is highly coveted. I also learned that several stores in our area stock them: Wal-Mart, Toys-R-Us, Game Spot, Best Buy, Circuit City. I found myself learning the Wii Spawn Schedule: Tues/Thurs at Best Buy, Mon-Thurs at Game Spot, 1130-12pm Mon-Sat at Toys-R-US and randomly on any day at the remaining spawn spots stores.

Despite calculating estimated spawn times in EQ, I’d make little characters to post at the spawn spots and would randomly log them on to check the spawn spots at odd times too. Once at the mall, Ashlyn and I decided to check on Game Spot to see if they had any by chance, not really believing that we’d actually find one. So we had chinese in the food court first and did our shopping before stopping by for them to tell us that “No, no Wiis today.” Ashlyn walked into the store to see two little girls buying a Wii. They laughed, yes, laughed, at Ashlyn. I found myself wanting to gank their Wii. Little brats do not deserve our Wii. We learned a valuable lesson, check the spawn spots first, eat and shop for other stuff later.

So after months of checking all the spawn spots, and becoming known to the local NPCs (Non-Player Characters) store employees, we completed our WiiQuest last Sunday! Yay! Would you believe that we were too busy doing other stuff that we didn’t even open it until yesterday? That’s a lot like completing the EQ epic quest, a lot of people were so exhausted (especially the clerics) that they slept for a few days after. LOL

As if I didn’t have enough things to distract me from blogging…

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 11th, 2007 at 10:22 am and is filed under Entertainment, Gaming, Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.